Li Mei got off to an awkward start with her backstory featuring her competing in the "Deadly Alliance Tournament", which. Is not. A Thing. In Deadly Alliance? Deadly Alliance isn't a tournament; it's about two assholes teaming up to kill Shao Kahn and Liu Kang, and everyone else dogpiling on their faces and getting obnoxiously killed to set up Deception.

MK's plot hasn't been about tournaments since Mortal Kombat 2.

I think it was later established that the tournament they were referring to was some minor thing among villages or some shit and she was the only named competitor involved in it, but that just still felt like a blatant attempt at ass-covering over a very confusing writing misstep. Like. Not confusing in the sense that it confused DA's plot; confusing in the sense that one wonders how the hell that happened.

Drake's Razor: Never attribute to cold, dispassionate logic that which can be equally or better explained by emotional outburst.

Just because the tournament wasn't a major focus in Deadly Alliance doesn't mean it was non-existent. Kenshi's story is about seeking to kill Shang Tsung for blinding him and stealing his ancestors' souls but that doesn't mean Deadly Alliance was about Kenshi's revenge against Shang Tsung. The reason the tournament wasn't mentioned anywhere else was because it was relevant only to Li Mei.

Though I do find it rather poignant that Li Mei's ending shows the tournament to be nothing more than a farce to gain more souls for the Dragon Army. It almost feels like some kind of meta commentary on how MK has treated the tournament concept since MK 2. "Hah, you actually thought this stupid tournament actually meant something? Well don't you have egg on your face!"

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When you make a game called "Deadly Alliance" and then have a thing called "The Deadly Alliance Tournament", the natural expectation is that it is a plot-relevant thing that the game centers around.

Like. Imagine if the Mortal Kombat Tournament was just some kung-fu thing in Liu Kang's backstory that has no actual relevance to any of the other characters or the general plot of the original game. At some point, Liu fought in a thing called a Mortal Kombat Tournament but nobody cares about that because we're in space shooting lasers at lizard-Klingons.

That is the tournament that Li Mei won. It's a miniscule, unimportant plot point with no bearing on the story of that game or the franchise as a whole, never comes up in any other character's story, and yet somehow gets a big important Title Drop as if it mattered.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Feb 11th 2019 at 11:01:22 AM

Drake's Razor: Never attribute to cold, dispassionate logic that which can be equally or better explained by emotional outburst.

Ashrah spends all of Deception pursuing her own agenda with a magic sword that slowly purifies her evil by slaying demons. It's named Kriss. It is not named The Deception Blade. If it was named The Deception Blade, then one would assume it was a central plot point for Mortal Kombat: Deception.

I'm not saying the game's named after the tournament. I'm saying if you're going to put the game's title onto a plot point, then it should be an important plot point. And the Deadly Alliance Tournament is a super-minor plot point that should be called literally anything but the Deadly Alliance Tournament if it's going to appear in a game called Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance.

You don't put Title Drops on unnecessary background details that nobody's supposed to pay attention to. A Title Drop says "LOOK AT ME, I'M IMPORTANT". And the tournament is not important. At all. To anything.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Feb 11th 2019 at 11:46:26 AM

Drake's Razor: Never attribute to cold, dispassionate logic that which can be equally or better explained by emotional outburst.

Like it or not, you can't really have a DC game without Joker but without Lex friggin Luthor? Get out of here. But this is a MK thread so that's beside the point.

Unpopular opinion, I don't like how the last 2 MK game keeps changing character's gimmick. While it's probably going to be a good thing for Sub-Zero, I hate that I'm going to re-learn the character again.

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